Steve: survey and discussion of perceptions of the elderly

We had a discussion about elderly people. The first question is what is old. I came up with people who have grandchildren. because generally, people will consider people with grandchildren as old. Some ideas or things connected to the old are Grandparents, parents, some restaurants, and death. Grandparents and parents are old. The restaurants I am talking about are those street-side stories that look like they are falling apart. Death means you will die when you are old. I relate this image to old because, on Golem, there is little hair, it is short, grump, creepy, losing teeth, and has wrinkles. The next question is am I afraid of becoming old? I think I am because things will change by the time I get old. I don't want to be a dying old man filled with regret. Also, I am still young and things will be different then.

Next, we had to come up with words that describe old people. I came up with Cranky, Annoying, and Dumb. Sometimes old people get mad and they nag. They are dumb because their brain is not as clear as it once was. The next question is, what would they want to do in their free time? I chose, to talk to other old people, nag, and worry because I see that in my grandparents.

Next question was, what difficulties do old people face? I think they are, cannot move around easily, they get looked down on by society, and they are bored most of the time.

Next, places they would like or like to visit, I chose their graves, graveyards, and temples because old people like to pray and like to visit their friends and relatives, also, they have to find a place to rest.

Next, we looked at the worries old people have. I thought that they were worried about dying and the people they know dying before them. I thought that because, I think old people have a higher chance of dying compared to young people, and they probably do not want to see their children die before they do.

We also went and asked the people in CIT and one other person in the general public to answer these questions. Some of them gave very good answers but most of them gave answers that were not very useful. For example, the person who gave us answers outside, gave us very useless questions and did not give us an answer for one of the questions. Well, I guess she felt a bit uncomfortable. The other people in CIT gave pretty good answers, they looked like they sat and thought about it. Also, we took a lot of time to ask our questions and we needed many answers. I am glad they did not tell us to leave or show that they were impatient. Our team of researchers went to research people's perceptions of old people. To do so, this research team went around an office to ask questions and even asked one person outside. It was a pretty terrible experience but some useful information was found. One thing thaw found out was people think old people like family time or any positive thing to do with the family. They might think so because, it might be because they are lonely and they do not want to die alone. Being alone is also one of the fears of old people we recorded. Their fear of being alone also caused them to like to socialize with other old people. It has been recorded that old people like to talk with other old people. This might be a contributing factor to why old people like to talk a lot. It might also be that, they think that they might die soon and they want to say as much as possible. However, that would make them seem annoying which one person also agreed with.

Comparing the researcher's answers and their answers, it was quite similar. Everyone gave quite general answers. Most of the answers were putting a negative light on old people. This is quite unfortunate for them because they probably did many great things in their time. Also, one day we will be old too. So, are we insulting our future selves? It is fine becuase the old people probably thought the same thing when they were our age. Now they know what it feels like and we will too when we get older.

Nonetheless, a few special answers were spotted did see a few special answers. For example, some people said a few special answers were spotted. Some said that they were knowledgeable, cute, rich, and sincere. The reseacher estimates that 80% is negative and 20% is positive. There were also a lot of common examples. Walking and talking just some of the few very common answers. That may be because we asked people of the same age in the same area. To prove this theory, we should ask more people of different ages. Another thing we should do is ask old people the same questions. Then, we can compare the answers of younger people to the answers of old people. If we want to fix this issue, we should allow old people to not retire. Not force them to retire. However, that may cause more bad than good. This is a very hard topic to solve because we need to make sure that we good outweighs the bad. This is very hard because different people value different things. The idea suggested gives old people freedom of choice. The good outweighs the bad because if they are tired they would not work. Some might say that if they need money, even if they are tired they will still work. Instead, think about it this way, if you do not give them work, they will have no money and they will die in the same amount of time. This change will allow them to choose how they want to die and they will die on their terms. However, if they are strong, they might pull through.